Former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba has conceded defeat in the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The winner, Joseph Kabila, son of an assassinated former coup leader, will be inaugurated next week.

"In the name of the higher interest of the nation and with a concern to preserve peace and avoid the country's collapse in chaos and violence...I take responsibility and commit to lead a string republican opposition": so said Jean-Pierre Bemba.

The Democratic Republic of Congo remains calm but tense after the Supreme Court certified the electoral victory of interim President Joseph Kabila. The losing candidate, former rebel and current Vice President, Jean-Pierre Bemba, has yet to concede.

The Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday declared Joseph Kabila winner of a controversial presidential run-off election held on 29 October."The Supreme Court of Justice declares Joseph Kabila Kabange elected by an absolute majority," Benoit Lwamba Bindu, the court's first president, said in Kinshasa, the capital.

The DRC Supreme Court on November 27 2006 confirmed Joseph Kabila as the new President of the DRC, and found against the legal protestations of election irregularities by his presidential rival Jean Pierre Bemba.

The Supreme Court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has certified the victory of incumbent President Joseph Kabila in October elections. His rival in the second round of voting, former Uganda-backed rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, had mounted a legal challenge to final results, saying there was fraud.

Human rights groups are protesting what they say is the eviction of street youths from Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa. Hundreds of children and young adults have been rounded up recently, and the adults sent to the province of Katanga a thousand kilometers away. Franz Wild recently visited Kinshasa, and files this report for VOA.

United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will support the Congolese army if needed in enforcing a 48-hour security ultimatum in the capital to remove forces loyal to the losing candidate in last month's presidential elections, the top UN envoy to the strife-torn country has said.

Residents of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, have largely remained indoors and fearful after President Joseph Kabila requested that his rival Jean-Pierre Bemba withdraw some of his personal guards from the city by Friday.

The "uncontrolled" elements of the militia of the defeated presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former rebel leader, must be "neutralized": as stated by Interior Minister Denis Kalume, while President Joseph Kabila - confirmed provisionally after victory in the runoff - gave his rival 48 hours to move his personal guards out of Kinshasa.